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The Things That Didn't Become

All I can
say of my life is that some things have not gone exactly as planned. Like in
elementary 3 when I shared a bench with Torti Silvanus, a certain boy with
infectious unquietness. We were caned so
often that I had to think up a device to save my bum from further ruin. While
we dressed for school one morning, I stole my mother’s girdle and wore it
beneath my P.E shorts, holding the loose sides with a clothes peg.

In class, I
and Torti talked and whistled and made faces at the busybody class captain as she wrote names of noisemakers. I would have been disappointed if my name was not on the list. We were called out in front of the class to take our whipping.
Torti always gave a spectacle; he’d wind his pelvis and take his strokes with
stylish grunts. His bum was made of dead cells, I bet you; that dude never
cried. When my turn came, I thought, Bring it on Ma'am, bring it on! For I know my
defense is sure! But when Madam Nwaubani grabbed my shorts across my bum,
I guess she smelled foul play. She increased her horsepower and I cried
and cried and cried, my defense failing me.

In my first year in boarding school, I
couldn’t understand why the meals were so sparse and the tea too hot and
transparent. So one night during prep, I wrote my mother a faux suicide note to
be delivered by my guardian, a teacher who lived on the same street with us. All
I can remember in the note is, “If I die… if I die…, HA HA HA HA!” The plan was
that my mother would come the next morning, have a row with the teachers and
beat up all the seniors that bullied me and then bundle her darling daughter
home. Well, she did come but there was no row with no one. Neither was anyone beaten up. But at least she came with homemade food which I devoured at the
gateman’s post and I went on to spend six more years in that school.

Was it the failed plans of becoming a nun (whoever
put that idea in my head); a doctor, after I flunked the first aptitude test and
suddenly realized I was a misfit and too restless for the medical world; when I thought I’d be the last born forever
and my mother showed up from the hospital with a brand new baby? The list of dreams long perished goes on. At
14, I decided to write my life’s calendar. I asked my mother, “When did you get married?” and
she said 22. I wanted same for me, so I marked it down, forgetting this is not 1980-something when men came easy. Or is
it when I had to stay home one whole year as I waited admission to the
university…? So many failed plans.

But none of
these things move me. Rather I’m on my knees, rubbing my palms together, grateful to
God for those things that could have been but did not become; the things I wanted to be but did not
become. If that girdle prank had worked, I might have still been ridden with
Torti’s rambunctiousness, for the next day, I pleaded with Madam Nwaubani to take my seat far, far away from his.

Had I left
boarding school, I would have been sent to one of those bush schools nearer home and I would not have learned the grace to endure, how to abase and
how to abound, to be content, whether hungry or full. Thank God for that denied
admission, for that extra year at home that inflicted me with severe
loneliness. Without it, I would never have put pen to paper and become the
writer that I am. And thank God it didn’t happen at 22. For the way it is with
me and how ambitious I can get, who knows, I could
have had 7 children by now!

An essentially and admirably prosaic triumph of documentation. Nearly all the most telling, odious and comic features of a typical African child, who must play pranks to satisfy the divine essence of his age "bracket", and the associated variables that go with that stage in his life are captured, vividly observed. It is also an astonishing and compelling humour with bitterly sincere passion on the exigencies of an innocent childhood - eating up deeper and deeper into the deep recesses of a tender, anxious, questioning, and yearning heart, circling in tightening rings, never letting go. A heart heavily burdened with the beauty of the gleam, the beauty of high-powered things. Yet, the wings to fly the tender heart with the desirable smoothness in the sweet direction of the gleam seem an eternity away, an illusion. Gone! Remains gone!

But as the broken tender heart grows into something bigger, mends and takes a mature frame, it suddenly dawns on it that its helluva of wishes, its experience at that time, its own anxiety, its own epiphanies were only a rediscovering of the nature of mankind and the emotional and psychological masturbation of a "helpless" child.

There are lyrics we like, lyrics we love, lyrics we cherish and lyrics that change us. You will feel different after reading Ucheoma's THE THINGS THAT DIDN'T BECOME. Something in your throat, heart, stomach, or subconscious...

Wow. If I must confess, your such a potential writer. Excellent use of words combine with correct and accurate grammar placement. I am really trail by your wonderful story line and also your characters. As an editor such master piece like this one should be published in good magazine. No doubt it visibly rob off the you are someone who reads good books and that why this Wonderful piece of writing shows it all. Keep it up....I see u heading to the top